Plastic chokes Vietnam’s shoreline

There’s almost more plastic than sand on this long, tree-lined beach: Plastic helmets, plastic furniture and the plastic leg of a shop mannequin all jut out of an ocean of blue plastic bags.

READ MORE: Whale dies after 80 plastic bags found crammed in its stomach

Just south of the capital Hanoi, the once-peaceful and clean beach of Hau Loc in Vietnam‘s Thanh Hoa province, has been slowly suffocating under the weight of plastic waste for decades, highlighting an environmental crisis ahead of World Environment Day on Tuesday (June 5).

“They put everything in a plastic bag. If they’re preserving shrimp or preserving fish, they put it in a plastic bag,” seafood processor Pham Thi Lai, 60, said of local fishermen, many of whom shuck clam shells and dry shrimp between the mounds of plastic waste on the beach.

Vietnam is the fourth-largest contributor to marine plastic pollution globally, a 2015 study by the University of Georgia showed. Globally, eight million tonnes of plastic is dumped into the ocean every year, killing marine life and entering the human food chain, the U.N. Environment Programme said in December.